Bug 2264523 - Confusion about "Name" of partition
Summary: Confusion about "Name" of partition
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: cockpit
Version: 42
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Marius Vollmer
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: AnacondaWebUITracker
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2024-02-16 10:07 UTC by Jan Stodola
Modified: 2026-06-08 15:45 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2026-06-08 15:45:48 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
screenshot (91.29 KB, image/png)
2024-02-16 10:08 UTC, Jan Stodola
no flags Details

Description Jan Stodola 2024-02-16 10:07:14 UTC
When creating a new partition in cockpit storage in the installer, there is a field called "Name" as the first one.
My initial thought was to enter the mount point ("/"), but since there is another field called "Mount point", I got really confused what is the purpose of the "Name" field.

Some possibilities in my mind are:
1. I can write the name of the new block device: "/dev/vda1"
2. I can use it to set the file system label: "rootfs"
3. It is used as some kind of user-friendly identifier for the next steps of the installer: "My root file system"

Also, it's not clear to me if the "Name" field is optional or mandatory.

Can you please clarify the purpose of the "Name" field?

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Jan Stodola 2024-02-16 10:08:50 UTC
Created attachment 2017172 [details]
screenshot

Comment 2 Jelle van der Waa 2024-02-19 08:25:30 UTC
Thanks for the issue, the Name in the "Create Partition" dialog is the filesystem label which afterwards can be changed. The dialog might be confusing as you are doing two steps at once, creating a partition and creating a filesystem usually if you do this by hand it's two separate steps either cfdisk /dev/sda, do your partitioning and then mkfs.xfs /dev/sda2. So maybe that should be more clear?

Comment 3 Marius Vollmer 2024-02-19 09:25:56 UTC
Maybe we should just remove the "Name" field from the dialog? People can always set it later, and its present in the dialog seems to be more confusing than useful.

Comment 4 Marius Vollmer 2024-02-19 09:27:36 UTC
Maybe we should just remove the "Name" field from the dialog? People can always set it later, and its presence in the dialog seems to be more confusing than useful.

Comment 5 Jan Stodola 2024-02-19 10:15:02 UTC
I think the field would be perfectly fine if it was called for example "File System Label" and was not on top of the dialog window.

Removing the field is also fine from my point of view if it can be returned in case the users request it. Based on our survey from 2022, about 6.5% of people change a device label during the installation.

Comment 6 Vojtech Trefny 2024-02-19 13:49:56 UTC
(In reply to Jelle van der Waa from comment #2)
> the Name in the "Create Partition" dialog is the filesystem label

In that case, I think it would be worth renaming the field to "filesystem label" -- (GPT) partitions can also have names and when I first saw this, I thought it's partition name and not filesystem label.

Comment 7 Marius Vollmer 2024-02-21 08:59:38 UTC
(In reply to Jan Stodola from comment #5)
> I think the field would be perfectly fine if it was called for example "File
> System Label" and was not on top of the dialog window.

Yes, let's do that.

Comment 8 Marius Vollmer 2024-02-21 09:50:25 UTC
https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit/pull/20066

Comment 9 Aoife Moloney 2025-02-26 12:58:16 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 42 development cycle.
Changing version to 42.

Comment 10 Martin Pitt 2026-01-28 11:06:40 UTC
These PRs were abandoned. Let's move that back to NEW.

Comment 11 Fedora Release Engineering 2026-05-06 11:35:39 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora Linux 42 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora Linux 42 on 2026-05-13.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
'version' of '42'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
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Click the "Show advanced fields" button if you do not see it.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora Linux 42 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora Linux, you are encouraged to change the 'version' to a later version
prior to this bug being closed.

Comment 12 Aoife Moloney 2026-06-08 15:45:48 UTC
Fedora Linux 42 entered end-of-life (EOL) status on 2026-05-27.

Fedora Linux 42 is no longer maintained, which means that it
will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we
are closing this bug.

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